Then the judge pounded his gavel and said, “The court vacates this young man’s fine.”
Winston, who’d been hangdog throughout the proceedings, brightened like his switch had been turned on. He pumped his lawyer’s hand and turned to his mother, seated behind him just beyond the railing, and they hugged.
On the way out Marie Winston, smiling gently, touched my arm and said, “Thank you very much, Mr. Heller.”
“I don’t think I made much difference.”
“I think you did. The judge vacated the fine, after all.”
“Hell, I had nothing to do with that. Mildred was your star witness.”
“In a way I guess she was.”
“I notice her husband wasn’t here.”
Son Charles spoke up. “No, he’s at work. He…well, he thought it was better he not be here. We figured that woman would be here, after all.”
“That woman is sick.”
“In the head,” Charles said bitterly.
“That’s right. You or I couldbe sick that way, too. Somebody ought to help her.”
Marie Winston, straining to find some compassion for Mildred Bolton, said, “Who would you suggest?”
“Damnit,” I said, “the husband. He’s been with her fourteen years. She didn’t get this way overnight. The way I see it, he’s got a responsibility to get her some goddamn help before he dumps her by the side of the road.”
Mrs. Winston smiled at that, some compassion coming through after all. “You have a very modern point of view, Mr. Heller.”
“Not really. I’m not even used to talkies yet. Anyway, I’ll see you, Mrs. Winston. Charles.”
And I left the graystone building and climbed in my ’32 Auburn and drove back to my office. I parked in the alley, in my space, and walked over to the Berghoff for lunch. I think I hoped to find Bolton there. But he wasn’t.
I went back to the office and puttered a while; I had a pile of retail credit-risk checks to whittle away at.
Hell with it, I thought, and walked over to Bolton’s office building, a narrow, fifteen-story, white granite structure just behind the Federal Reserve on West Jackson, next to the El. Bolton was doing all right-better than me, certainly-but as a broker he was in the financial district only by a hair. No doubt he was a relatively small-time insurance broker, making twenty or twenty-five grand a year. Big money by my standards, but a lot of guys over at the Board of Trade spilled more than that.
There was no lobby really, just a wide hall between facing rows of shops-newsstand, travel agency, cigar store. The uniformed elevator operator, a skinny, pockmarked guy about my age, was waiting for a passenger. I was it.
“Tenth floor,” I told him, and he took me up.
He was pulling open the cage doors when we heard the air crack, three times.
“What the hell was that?” he said.
“It wasn’t a car backfiring,” I said. “You better stay here.”
I moved cautiously out into the hall. The elevators came up a central shaft, with a squared-off “c” of offices all about. I glanced quickly at the names on the pebbled glass in the wood-partition walls, and finally lit upon BOLTON AND SCHMIDT, INSURANCE BROKERS. I swallowed and moved cautiously in that direction as the door flew open and a young woman flew out-a dark-haired dish of maybe twenty with wide eyes and a face drained of blood, her silk stockings flashing as she rushed my way.
She fell into my arms and I said, “Are you wounded?”
“No,” she swallowed, “but somebody is.”
The poor kid was gasping for air; I hauled her toward the bank of elevators. Even under the strain, I was enjoying the feel and smell of her.
“You wouldn’t be Joseph Bolton’s secretary, by any chance?” I asked, helping her onto the elevator.
She nodded, eyes still huge.
“Take her down,” I told the operator.
And I headed back for that office. I was nearly there when I met Joseph Bolton, as he lurched down the hall. He had a gun in his hand. His light brown suitcoat was splotched with blood in several places; so was his right arm. He wasn’t wearing his eyeglasses, which made his face seem naked somehow. His expression seemed at once frightened, pained, and sorrowful.
He staggered toward me like a child taking its first steps, and I held my arms out to him like daddy. But they were more likely his last steps: he fell to the marble floor and began to writhe, tracing abstract designs in his own blood on the smooth surface.
I moved toward him and he pointed the gun at me, a little .32 revolver. “Stay away! Stay away!”
“Okay, bud, okay,” I said.
I heard someone laughing.
A woman.
I looked up and in the office doorway, feet planted like a giant surveying a puny world, was dumpy little Mildred, in her floral housedress and raccoon stole. Her mug was split in a big goofy smile.
“Don’t pay any attention to him, Mr. Heller,” she said, lightly. “He’s just faking.”
“He’s shot to shit, lady!” I said.
Keeping their distance out of respect and fear were various tenth-floor tenants, standing near their various offices, as if witnessing some strange performance.
“Keep her away from me!” Bolton managed to shout. His mouth was bubbling with blood. His body moved slowly across the marble floor like a slug, leaving a slimy red trail.
I moved to Mrs. Bolton, stood between her and Bolton. “You just take it easy…”
Mrs. Bolton, giggling, peeked out from in back of me. “Look at him, fooling everybody.”
“You behave,” I told her. Then I called out to a businessman of about fifty near the elevators. I asked him if there were any doctors in the building, and he said yes, and I said then for Christsake go get one.
“Why don’t you get up and stop faking?” she said teasingly to her fallen husband, the Southern drawl dripping off her words. She craned her neck around me to see him, like she couldn’t bear to miss a moment of the show.
“Keep her away! Keep her away!”
Bolton continued to writhe like a wounded snake, but he kept clutching that gun, and wouldn’t let anyone near him. He would cry out that he couldn’t breathe, beating his legs against the floor, but he seemed always conscious of his wife’s presence. He would move his head so as to keep my body between him and her round cold glittering eyes.
“Don’t you mind Joe, Mr. Heller. He’s just putting on an act.”
If so, I had a hunch it was his final performance.
And now he began to scream in agony.
I approached him and he looked at me with tears in his eyes, eyes that bore the confusion of a child in pain, and he relented, allowed me to come close, handed me the gun, like he was offering a gift. I accepted it, by the nose of the thingdropped it in my pocket.
“Did you shoot yourself, Mr. Bolton?” I asked him.
“Keep that woman away from me,” he managed, lips bloody.
“He’s not really hurt,” his wife said, mincingly, from the office doorway.
“Did your wife shoot you?”
“Just keep her away…”
Two people in white came rushing toward us-a doctor and a nurse-and I stepped aside, but the doctor, a middle-aged, rather heavyset man with glasses, asked if I’d give him a hand. I said sure and pitched in.
Bolton was a big man, nearly two hundred pounds I’d say, and pretty much dead weight; we staggered toward the elevator like drunks. Like Bolton himself had staggered toward me, actually. The nurse tagged along.
So did Mrs. Bolton.
The nurse, young, blond, slender, did her best to keep Mrs. Bolton out of the elevator, but Mrs. Bolton pushed her way through like a fullback. The doctor and I, bracing Bolton, couldn’t help the young nurse.
Bolton, barely conscious, said, “Please…please, keep her away.”
“Now, now,” Mrs. Bolton said, the violence of her entry into the elevator forgotten (by her), standing almost primly, hands folded over the big black purse, “everything will be all right, dear. You’ll see.”